Preliminary Result
09/30/2009 (Mw 7.6), Padang, Indonesia

Location of Epicenter

Amount of Slip on Fault

Colors show the amount of slip on diferent sections of the fault zone. Two views are shown (either view can be de-selected on the Google Earth sidebar):

Circles show a 3-D map of the fault. (The fault map has been raised above the Earth's surface. Click on a circle to get the depth of that fault segment.)

Image shows the projection of the fault onto the Earth's surface.

DATA Process and Inversion

We used the GSN broadband data downloaded from the IRIS DMC. We analyzed 23 teleseismic
P waveforms and 27 teleseismic SH waveforms selected based upon data quality and azimuthal
distribution. Waveforms are first converted to displacement by removing the instrument
response and then used to constrain the slip history based on a finite fault
inverse algorithm (Ji et al, 2002). We use the epicenter location of the USGS (Lon.=99.961 ° Lat.=-0.789 °). The 1D velocity model is extracted from the CRUST2.0 global tomography model (Bassin et al., 2000). The depth of the epicenter is fixed at 80 km, and the rupture velocity is assumed to be about 2.4 km/sec.

Result

The solution is made of one sharp slip patch down-dip of the epicenter. Because of these source characteristics and the unexplained structural origin of this earthquake, we cannot infer which of the two nodal planes corresponds to the rupture plane. Below, we present the solutions (models A and B) obtained for the two fault orientations proposed by the GCMT double-couple solution:

MODEL A: strike=193 °, dip=58 °

MODEL B: strike=72 °, dip=51 °

Cross-section of slip distribution

Figure 1: The big black arrow shows the fault's strike. The colors show the slip
amplitude and white arrows indicate the direction of motion of the hanging wall
relative to the footwall. Contours show the rupture initiation time and the red
star indicates the hypocenter location. Both models have most of the slip down-dip

Comparison of data and synthetic seismograms

Figure 2: The Data are shown in black and the synthetic seismograms are plotted
in red. Both data and synthetic seismograms are aligned on the P arrivals.
The number at the end of each trace is the peak amplitude of the observation
in micro-meter. The number above the beginning of each trace is the source azimuth
and below it is the epicentral distance. The fit of the waveforms is equivalent for the two fault models.

Map view of the slip distribution

Figure 3: Surface projections of the slip distributions.

Map view of the surface deformation

Figure 3: Surface deformation predicted from Models A and B. The vertical component of displacement is given by the color scale, and the horizontal motion by the arrows.

Global Seismographic Network (GSN) is a cooperative scientific facility operated jointly by the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS), the United States Geological Survey (USGS), and the National Science Foundation (NSF).